Image: Blizzard Entertainment
PlayStation players are having trouble getting into Diablo 4’s early access launch.
It shouldn’t be too surprising after the open beta fiascos from earlier this year, but Diablo 4 is not having a smooth launch so far. The highly-anticipated action-RPG launched in early access today for anyone who pre-ordered the Digital Deluxe or Ultimate Edition which would be great if not for the fact that PlayStation owners still can't play it.
PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 owners are greeted with a strange ‘Unable to find a valid license for Diablo 4’ error message when trying to log into the game at the moment, which has rightfully upset a good portion of the community considering they paid extra for early access. Blizzard is well aware of the problem, updating players that, “We are seeing reports regarding PlayStation users experiencing Invalid License errors. The team is looking into this right now and will update once we have more information.”
There is a fix to this error, but you’re not going to like it. Players on Reddit have noted that while joining the PlayStation queue always ends in an error message, simply purchasing a microtransaction will get you into the game immediately. Many are going for the cheapest $1.99 in-game currency bundle as a way to get into the game until Blizzard gets this fixed, so this is actually working out pretty well for the publisher, all things considered.
This seems to be an issue with the PlayStation Network and not with Blizzard itself, considering that the game works fine on PC and Xbox platforms so far, and some are having problems playing digital copies of other games in their library. Players have reported that simply downloading a game from their PlayStation Plus library or some other kind of free title is enough to get PSN to recognise that they have a valid license for their digital games, which happily also fixes the Diablo 4 error. After that, they can log in without issue - but your results may vary.
At the very least, try it the free way before spending $1.99.